Read, Think, Write, Learn

In trying to be a conscientious, career-minded programmer, one of my goals has been to keep abreast of the goings-on in the programming world. Keeping current and learning new things is really vital for the overall success of a programmer. It keeps you relevant, it keeps you from being pigeon-holed, and it helps you stay interested in developing software, to name a few reasons.

In pursuit of that goal, in the last few months I've been looking for interesting blogs and sites that are relevant to my work. There are a few that I felt are worth mentioning. In fact, you'll notice that I've even gone as far as to add links on my sidebar! (Go ahead, look over there.)

The first one I want to mention is the excellent Grant Skinner's gBlog. I was first introduced to this blog sometime a year or so ago when I was doing a lot of Flash work. At the time we were having some problems with our application which turned out to be memory / garbage collection issues. Enter the gBlog. Mr. Skinner has some very helpful information out there about memory management in ActionScript 3 (AS3). Now I may have run across his site before, but this time it stuck. Useful information and really cool demos? That's a site to not forget.

More recently (in the last month or so), I've started following another blog called Coding Horror written by Jeff Atwood. I have found this blog to be very interesting. He has great writing style that practically compels me to read it and he covers some, dare I say, delectable topics. Plus he is working on a very cool site: Stack Overflow.

The thing that I love about these two blogs is that while I might not agree with everything they write, they cause me to think about stuff I care about. And that, my friends, is worth its weight in kilobytes.

"Mr. Spock, scan that book!"

I am not exactly sure what started it, but recently I have been in the mood to be reading again. I have not done much reading for my own enjoyment since before I graduated from college. I suppose you could say that I've been busy doing other things. I have certainly gorged myself on a virtual buffet of video games and DVDs. But I feel like I should be reading more. So I eventually got around to it.

Typically the biggest challenge I face regarding reading comes (ironically) before I even set my eyes on a page. I have trouble choosing a book. For some reason or another, the selection process hampers my progression until I strongly resemble The Thinker -- complete with a stony expression.

However, this time around I had a helpful jump start. I've been listing to the Security Now Netcast and they recommended an author by the name of Michael McCollum. I've always been a big sci-fi fan, so I wandered over to his site and checked it out. As I read some of his short stories, I felt the electricity start to flow. Pretty soon my engine turned over and started running on its own. I was ready to really start reading again.

Now I just need to get my hands on some books. I looked on my shelf, but only found a lonely handful of novels. Only one of them was science fiction. My wife has a few... but no science fiction. So I devoured the single Star Trek book over this weekend. My goal this week is to get my hands on a few more books to read.

Another influence for reading that I've had has come from my work. Occasionally my co-workers will talk about the books they are reading. Then one of them invited me to try out a site called Goodreads which is sort of a social networking site about books. So if any of my friends out there are on it, or choose to try it out, let me know what you think. Currently I'm using it to cull a list of books to read.

I'm excited about reading again. It seems like a good thing.